Ever sat down to write a grant and somehow ended up reviewing someone’s data, answering Slack messages, approving invoices, and tracking down a missing conference receipt?
And then—suddenly—it’s five o’clock, and that grant proposal? Still a blinking cursor on a blank page.
Yeah. We’ve been there.
Here’s what’s happening: You’re not bad at managing your time. You’re being robbed of it. Quietly. Constantly. By something that sounds small but adds up fast.
That something is context switching—and it’s one of the biggest hidden costs of academic leadership.
Context switching is the silent drain on your day.
Every time you shift from one task to another—answering a Slack message, fielding a student question, jumping into a “quick” budget fix—you lose a lot more than these minutes that you talk to the team or colleague.
Neuroscience shows it takes ~23 minutes to fully refocus after an interruption. Now multiply that by how many times you get pulled away.
This is how your most important work—the thinking, writing, leading—gets squeezed into the margins.
And when you lead a research team, it’s even harder. You could jump in and handle it all. But if you always do, your deep work gets pushed to tomorrow, evenings, and weekends. Again.
Why We Keep Doing It (Even Though We Know Better)
You already know context switching slows you down. So why do we keep doing it?
Because your brain, your environment, and your tools are all working against your focus. Here’s how:
🧠 Your Brain Craves Novelty
Every ping, preview, or tap on the shoulder triggers a dopamine hit. Your brain is wired to chase what’s new—even if it costs you momentum.
Attention is drawn to novelty… this reward prediction error is a driver of distraction.
📱 Your Tools Are Designed to Hijack You
Apps use the same behavioral tricks as slot machines—badges, notifications, surprise feedback—to keep you checking, clicking, and switching.
“We’ve applied casino principles to your inbox, your apps, and your team chat.” —Tristan Harris
🧬 Multitasking Feels Productive (But Isn’t)
Quick wins like replying to messages give you immediate payoff. Deep work? That takes patience. And your tired brain will always reach for easy.
“93% of people think they’re better than average at multitasking. […] Multitasking is just rapidly switching between tasks—and it hurts your performance in both of them.” —Adam Grant, Organizational psychologist
🧭 You’re the Bottleneck
As a leader, everyone needs a piece of your time. Feedback, approvals, decisions. The volume forces you into reactive mode—even when you don’t realize it.
The higher up you go, the more your time gets fragmented by the needs of others. Leadership requires fierce protection of focus.
💬 Responsiveness Looks Like Leadership
Fast replies get rewarded. Boundaries? Not so much. But if you’re always available, you can’t be deeply focused—and neither can your team.
Busyness has become a proxy for productivity. But if you’re constantly reacting, you’re not leading—you’re just managing the noise.
Why it matters
Your research doesn’t happen in five-minute fragments.
It happens when you have space to think clearly, follow a line of reasoning, chase an idea down a rabbit hole, or write without watching the clock. But context switching cuts that space to pieces. Every interruption leaves a cognitive residue—a trace of the last task that lingers in your working memory and slows you down.
You’re not just losing time. You’re losing depth.
And in academic leadership, that cost compounds. Because the work that only you can do—the visionary thinking, the writing that moves your field forward, the decisions that shape your team’s direction—requires unbroken focus.
Without that, you’re left in a constant state of catch-up:
- Always available, but never really present
- Always working, but never quite done
- Always thinking, but rarely thinking deeply
And here’s the deeper issue: when your day becomes a series of reactive tasks, your leadership does too. Your team mirrors your mode. If you’re constantly switching gears, they will be too.
So this isn’t just about personal productivity. It’s about reclaiming your role as a strategic leader—the one who sees the bigger picture and moves the work that truly matters.
What actually helps
At GLIA-Leadership, we don’t believe in magical morning routines (especially not when they start at 4 am) or productivity hacks. We believe in systems—simple, evidence-based ways to protect your attention and lead with clarity.
Here’s what’s worked for us and the research leaders we support:
✅ Block focused time
Two-hour chunks. Protected on your calendar. No Slack. No email. Just your brain and the project that needs it most.
How we implemented:
- You may also want to try which blocks work best for you to do focused work. I like writing manuscripts and grants in the morning but not too early, my brain has to kick into gear for this kind of work first. I am however very efficient at processing emails first thing in the morning.
- Close your email, Messages, Slack during Focus work blocks (if that makes you nervous, give people your phone number for emergencies–you’ll see that most email “emergencies” won’t rise to a phone call (especially by the GenZers we work with). 🙂
✅ Batch your decisions
Instead of answering questions on demand, set regular times for reviewing requests or giving feedback. Teach your team to “batch and hold” for those windows.
How we implemented:
- Stefanie’s team meets Monday morning at 8 am to talk through priorities, logistics, and organizational things.
- We have an Asana board for this meeting. People add tasks for items that need discussion and can wait until then. This has cut down on interruptions for everyone.
- Occasionally, someone will forget and bring stuff that could wait until Monday–just remind them, so that they learn over time that there is a time for this and it isn’t now.
✅ Make async the default
Not everything needs a meeting. Use tools like Notion, Trello, or even a shared doc to keep projects moving without constant calls.
How we implemented:
- We use Slack for ongoing chatter (Stefanie’s research team and GLIA-leadership) and email for things that shouldn’t get lost (like forms to sign)
- When a lot of to-dos accumulate or they don’t get done that day, I (Stefanie) found it helpful to either have daily summaries or checklists with clear assignments to team members or move this from Slack into Asana altogether. Things get lost in threads too easily otherwise
✅ Schedule co-working sessions
A new abstract lands in your inbox. Then a manuscript draft. Then a request to edit three figures or write a discussion section. When your day is shaped by incoming tasks you didn’t choose, focused work often gets squeezed out. That’s not the only problem though. A lot of PIs spend a significant amount of time explaining how to write the manuscript or fellowship. It’s easier to set aside time to do the work with your team—together—rather than spending time just talking about how the work will get done.
How we implemented:
- When my team was larger and the demand on my time higher, I put co-working sessions on my calendar each week. Team members could book these session. We would then work together, which turned out easier for me. My head was in it, it wasn’t just another unexpected to-do that landed in my inbox, and we could coordinate and make decisions faster (use this or the other representative image, write the story this or the other way).
- For a more spontaneous approach: I have my own writing sessions scheduled each day and sometimes pull team members into those when I need their feedback, ideas, or hand-on work.
✅ Build decision buffers
Not every question needs your input. Clarify when your sign-off is needed—and when it’s not. You’ll be amazed how much your team can handle.
How we implemented:
- We set a $$ amount for orders that the team can make without my input. Above that–we discuss
- The team knows that everything that leaves (abstracts, manuscripts, posters, etc.) needs my approval. But some more senior team members don’t need to show posters for local meetings. It’s just a matter of communicating expectations.
✅ Turn down the noise
Fewer notifications. Fewer distractions. More mental clarity. This is one of the most powerful shifts you can make.
How we implemented:
- Turn all your notifications off. A mentor suggested silencing notifications to me (Stefanie) almost 15 years ago, I took a few minutes to turn them off on my computer and never looked back. No pings, no banners… And in these 15 years I’ve missed maybe three meetings.
- How to avoid missing those meetings: Set an alarm on your watch or phone.
The leadership takeaway
If your days feel chaotic, it doesn’t mean you’re failing. It probably just means your systems haven’t caught up to the scope of your role.
Ever sat down to write a grant and somehow ended up reviewing someone’s data, answering Slack messages, approving invoices, and tracking down a missing conference receipt? And then—suddenly—it’s five o’clock, and that grant proposal? Still a blinking cursor on a blank page.
Yeah. We’ve been there.
Here’s what’s happening: You’re not bad at managing your time. You’re being robbed of it. Quietly. Constantly. By something that sounds small but adds up fast.
That something is context switching, and it’s one of the biggest hidden costs of academic leadership.
Context switching is the silent drain on your day. Every time you shift from one task to another: answering a Slack message, fielding a student question, jumping into a “quick” budget fix, you lose a lot more than these minutes that you talk to the team or colleague.
Neuroscience shows it takes ~23 minutes to fully refocus after an interruption. Now multiply that by how many times you get pulled away.
This is how your most important work…the thinking, writing, leading…gets squeezed into the margins.
And when you lead a research team, it’s even harder. You could jump in and handle it all. But if you always do, your deep work gets pushed to tomorrow, evenings, and weekends. Again.
Why We Keep Doing It (Even Though We Know Better)
You already know context switching slows you down. So why do we keep doing it?
Because your brain, your environment, and your tools are all working against your focus. Here’s how:
🧠 Your Brain Craves Novelty Every ping, preview, or tap on the shoulder triggers a dopamine hit. Your brain is wired to chase what’s new, even if it costs you momentum.
Attention is drawn to novelty… this reward prediction error is a driver of distraction.
📱 Your Tools Are Designed to Hijack You Apps use the same behavioral tricks as slot machines: badges, notifications, surprise feedback…to keep you checking, clicking, and switching.
“Every time you check your phone, you’re playing the slot machine to see what you got.” —Tristan Harris
If you’re an app, how do you keep people hooked? Turn yourself into a slot machine.
🧬 Multitasking Feels Productive (But Isn’t) Quick wins like replying to messages give you immediate payoff. Deep work? That takes patience. And your tired brain will always reach for easy.
“93% of people think they’re better than average at multitasking. […] Multitasking is just rapidly switching between tasks—and it hurts your performance in both of them.” —Adam Grant, Organizational psychologist
🧭 You’re the Bottleneck As a leader, everyone needs a piece of your time. Feedback, approvals, decisions. The volume forces you into reactive mode—even when you don’t realize it.
The higher up you go, the more your time gets fragmented by the needs of others. Leadership requires fierce protection of focus.
💬 Responsiveness Looks Like Leadership Fast replies get rewarded. Boundaries? Not so much. But if you’re always available, you can’t be deeply focused and neither can your team.
Busyness has become a proxy for productivity. But if you’re constantly reacting, you’re not leading…you’re just managing the noise.
Why it matters
Your research doesn’t happen in five-minute fragments.
It happens when you have space to think clearly, follow a line of reasoning, chase an idea down a rabbit hole, or write without watching the clock. But context switching cuts that space to pieces. Every interruption leaves a cognitive residue—a trace of the last task that lingers in your working memory and slows you down.
You’re not just losing time. You’re losing depth.
And in academic leadership, that cost compounds. Because the work that only you can do—the visionary thinking, the writing that moves your field forward, the decisions that shape your team’s direction…requires unbroken focus.
Without that, you’re left in a constant state of catch-up:
- Always available, but never really present
- Always working, but never quite done
- Always thinking, but rarely thinking deeply
And here’s the deeper issue: when your day becomes a series of reactive tasks, your leadership does too. Your team mirrors your mode. If you’re constantly switching gears, they will be too.
So this isn’t just about personal productivity. It’s about reclaiming your role as a strategic leader, the one who sees the bigger picture and moves the work that truly matters.
What actually helps
At GLIA-Leadership, we don’t believe in magical morning routines (especially not when they start at 4 am) or productivity hacks. We believe in systems: simple, evidence-based ways to protect your attention and lead with clarity.
Here’s what’s worked for us and the research leaders we support:
✅ Block focused time Two-hour chunks. Protected on your calendar. No Slack. No email. Just your brain and the project that needs it most.
How we implemented:
- You may also want to try which blocks work best for you to do focused work. I like writing manuscripts and grants in the morning but not too early, my brain has to kick into gear for this kind of work first. I am however very efficient at processing emails first thing in the morning.
- Close your email, Messages, Slack during Focus work blocks (if that makes you nervous, give people your phone number for emergencies–you’ll see that most email “emergencies” won’t rise to a phone call (especially by the GenZers we work with). 🙂
✅ Batch your decisions Instead of answering questions on demand, set regular times for reviewing requests or giving feedback. Teach your team to “batch and hold” for those windows.
How we implemented:
- Stefanie’s team meets Monday morning at 8 am to talk through priorities, logistics, and organizational things.
- We have an Asana board for this meeting. People add tasks for items that need discussion and can wait until then. This has cut down on interruptions for everyone.
- Occasionally, someone will forget and bring stuff that could wait until Monday–just remind them, so that they learn over time that there is a time for this and it isn’t now.
✅ Make async the default Not everything needs a meeting. Use tools like Notion, Trello, or even a shared doc to keep projects moving without constant calls.
How we implemented:
- We use Slack for ongoing chatter (Stefanie’s research team and GLIA-leadership) and email for things that shouldn’t get lost (like forms to sign)
- When a lot of to-dos accumulate or they don’t get done that day, I (Stefanie) found it helpful to either have daily summaries or checklists with clear assignments to team members or move this from Slack into Asana altogether. Things get lost in threads too easily otherwise
✅ Schedule co-working sessions
A new abstract lands in your inbox. Then a manuscript draft. Then a request to edit three figures or write a discussion section. When your day is shaped by incoming tasks you didn’t choose, focused work often gets squeezed out. That’s not the only problem though. A lot of PIs spend a significant amount of time explaining how to write the manuscript or fellowship. It’s easier to set aside time to do the work with your team—together—rather than spending time just talking about how the work will get done.
How we implemented:
- When my team was larger and the demand on my time higher, I put co-working sessions on my calendar each week. Team members could book these session. We would then work together, which turned out easier for me. My head was in it, it wasn’t just another unexpected to-do that landed in my inbox, and we could coordinate and make decisions faster (use this or the other representative image, write the story this or the other way).
- For a more spontaneous approach: I have my own writing sessions scheduled each day and sometimes pull team members into those when I need their feedback, ideas, or hand-on work.
✅ Build decision buffers Not every question needs your input. Clarify when your sign-off is needed…and when it’s not. You’ll be amazed how much your team can handle.
How we implemented:
- We set a $$ amount for orders that the team can make without my input. Above that–we discuss
- The team knows that everything that leaves (abstracts, manuscripts, posters, etc.) needs my approval. But some more senior team members don’t need to show posters for local meetings. It’s just a matter of communicating expectations.
✅ Turn down the noise Fewer notifications. Fewer distractions. More mental clarity. This is one of the most powerful shifts you can make.
How we implemented:
- Turn all your notifications off. A mentor suggested silencing notifications to me (Stefanie) almost 15 years ago, I took a few minutes to turn them off on my computer and never looked back. No pings, no banners… And in these 15 years I’ve missed maybe three meetings.
- How to avoid missing those meetings: Set an alarm on your watch or phone.
The leadership takeaway
If your days feel chaotic, it doesn’t mean you’re failing. It probably just means your systems haven’t caught up to the scope of your role.
Protecting your attention isn’t selfish, it’s leadership. It’s how you reclaim your capacity, guide your team more effectively, and finally get back to the science that brought you here in the first place.